Tsibiridou Olms

STATE CULTURE AND IBADHI TRADITION IN THE SULTANATE OF OMAN

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Fotini Tsibiridou

STATE CULTURE AND IBADHI TRADITION

IN THE SULTANATE OF OMAN στο Angeliki Ziaka (Ed.), On Ibadism. OLMS, Decembre 2013. (υπό έκδοση, επισυνάπτεται βεβαίωση) This paper is the first account of a number of questions arising from re-

search visits to Oman over 5 years between 2004 and 2009. The aim was to formulate hypotheses based on this particular study, which originated from a personal and anthropological interest for a more organised acquaintance and familiarisation with Muslim populations at the heart of the Middle East. My previous studies of Muslim minority populations in Greece and the Bal-kans had for many years pointed me in the direction of a more systematic search for different Islamic ‘traditions’.1 In this attention shift, from the Bal-kans to the Middle East, I was mainly assisted by extended anthropological literature, as well as teaching experiences: on the issue of the women and gender2 in the Balkans, Turkey and the Muslim world, as well as on the is-sue of orientalism and the post-colonial condition.3 With the above as the core of my interests, and after preliminary research in 2002, my yearly eth-nographic missions to the Sultanate of Oman began. This project focuses on the ‘evident habitus’, in other words, the cultural devices of the modern

The present study has been financially supported by the Research Committee

of the University of Macedonia for 2 academic years (2004-5), the private sponsoring of the C.C.C. company for 3 academic years (2005-6-7) and the contribution of the Research committee of Aristotle University of Thessaloniki for the years 2008-9.

ON IBADISM AND OMAN .

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state as this is perceived by its citizens through their every day experiences both in Muscat, the Sultanate’s capital, and regions in the periphery, such as Ras al Had.

The research has included fieldwork with consistent but sporadic visits to Oman. It attempted to challenge the long scaled or model based ap-proaches of sociology and political sciences. Our anthropological approach attempts to comprehend state culture4 by taking into consideration local and imported traditions of governance and religiousness as a conceptual category of feeling and everyday embodied practices. This habitus of gov-ernance and religiosity has lead, in the terms of Michel Foucault, to differ-ent practices of governmentality, involving first of all thorough power rela-tionships, both of the elites as well as different categories of people, such as modern citizens. Moreover, habitus and practices of governmentality and religiosity have locally been established either under the antagonistic Islamic traditions in the broader area before and after the arrival of the Western colonizers, or under the hegemony of the Western hierarchy of values in the frame of Modernity. The present paper is trying to take into consideration and challenge the orientalistic discourse and practices.5 By doing so, we will proceed to include the account of three scientific ap-proaches aiming to the use and abuse of different Islamic tradition: the ori-entalistic, historical and anthropological one.

All studies belonging to each of the previous scientific approaches helped me formulate questions and working hypotheses concerning space and history, personhood and society, gender and citizenship, religion and politics, etc. My ethnographic attempt, thus, acquired a multidisciplinary dimension, in the form of a dialectic discussion across the sciences of His-tory, Theology, Archaeology and Landscape Architecture.6 In this way, con-versations in the field took on particular importance because they formed the basis of a pluralistic dialogue leading to exchanges of opinions, judge-ments and interpretations. Above all, however, it was my participant obser-vation, experienced through conversations and activities with specific in-formants as well as the feeling of the place, a space dynamic outside his-torical hexegesis, which helped me and continue to give me access to a more thorough and consistent understanding of what could be a state cul-ture in the Sultanate of Oman under the heritage of the Ibadhi tradition. The colonial presence, for instance, having given rise to further relations of


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power and antagonisms, appears to have been a catalyst in giving a new meaning to the local but also imported traditions, mainly the Ibadhi one. All these traditions, which vary from self interest to the common good, have been selectively used by people, but they were definitely described and taxinomized upon the Western oriented hegemonic perceptions regarding politics, religion and individuality, shaping and reshaping social relation-ships in a new kind of collective belonging, such as the nation-state unit, in the first place.

This chapter will selectively use material from my fieldwork and will at-tempt to focus on the use, abuse and the different meanings of the Ibadhi tradition. We will attempt to find the significance all these uses and mean-ings of the past could acquire in the ongoing formation of modern state cul-ture in the Sultanate of Oman. In other words, instead of adopting the western-centred bipolar approaches of between tradition and modernity, public and private sectors, we followed the anthropological approach ‘from below’, or better ‘from inside’. That is to say, it appeared more appropriate for us to attempt a plan at first from the state culture searching although for the local and global intersection of practices and experiences coming up both, from the elite governance as well as from citizenship experiences.7 All the above selected practices have generated habitus by making a selective use of history and traditions, both when they originated from elite groups and the Sultan as well as from ordinary people. It is becoming more and clearer from my self reflective fieldwork notes, that space, body and per-formed experiences make the particular place and people’s habitus mean-ingful within a particular ‘rational’ choice.8 Going over and over my notes concerning not only what I saw for myself and was being told, but also how I felt at the various spaces, I was gradually convinced about the need to speak about state culture in the Sultanate of Oman. This culture is given shape by both the elites and various categories of people based on where they belong with regard to class, ethnicity, language, religion, gender and tribe, which set them apart, but also with regard to the familiarities and aspirations for solidarity which unify them. Among these, the Ibadhi tradi-tion has to be considered of paramount importance, since it appears to feed on and inspire practices and habitus of personhood and collective be-longing. This (Ibadhi) tradition appears to act as glue which, through multi-ple technologies of power and hegemonic hierarchies of different tradi-


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tions, makes up the comparative advantage of the present state Omani cul-ture. This fact can be surmised from examining policies followed by the Sul-tan and his government, which makes use of elements of the Ibadhi tradi-tion in modern times (see policies of religious tolerance, attempts to ensure ‘fair access to political representation’ and ‘consultation’9) and this can generally or in parts motivate its people to make their difference as Omani citizens from the Other inhabitants of the Arab peninsula. It is also true, however, that the hegemony of English colonialism was established as an-other tradition of governance through technologies of registering, dividing and appointing. It is this hegemonic governmental tradition which was es-tablished in the Bedouin informants’ perception to stereotypically use the term ‘English’ for every foreign researcher in the area, therefore an edu-cated person taking notes and recording their everyday practices. This is how they referred to the Greek research team in spite of the awareness of our informants that we were ‘Unan’. This same Ibadhi tradition, however, might have led to practices of isolation and habitus of self-silencing, be-cause as an administrative model for the interior of Oman was the cause of conflict outcomes, which did not quite fit into the English colonial way of governance. Throughout the 20th century the state remained essentially partitioned, following the technologies of British administration. Later, dur-ing the process of the state’s modernization, any characteristics of Ibadhi administration are intentionally silenced, possibly under the hegemony of Western modernism. Sultan Qaboos himself appears, in his visions of de-velopment,10 to be inspired by many principles of the Ibadhi tradition but on the whole refuses to give full credit to it. On the other hand, the Ibadhi tradition is confirmed by ordinary people in their every-day life as a form of awareness of national solidarity in order for the Omani citizens to differen-tiate themselves nationally from their Saudi Wahhabi neighbors and the other Salafi set of puritanical morals and practices in the Gulf states and the Muslim world. Both male and female Omani citizens want to be different from other nationals of the Gulf states (Saudi Arabia and Arab Emirates) and point to their extrovert character, politeness and hospitality, but mainly to the liberal choices made by their enlightened and charismatic leadership. As they explained to me, an outsider, the difference of their culture since they are proud and different from the Saudis and other Arabs of the Gulf, they quote actions of every-day narcissism as they follow the path of old


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Islam, the Ibadhi tradition.11 All these in the middle of a life style with pre-vailing values of Western modernity including democracy and a model of capitalist development under the neo-liberal agenda, which adopts tech-nology and consumption but not necessarily the rest of Western values of civic virtue morality based on individuality.

The Sultanate of Oman, the area I chose for my research, in contrast to the other petrol monarchies of the Persian Gulf, is one worthy of observa-tion since a historical feature makes it unique and worthy of paying atten-tion to. This is related to its state of isolation, concerning Western moderni-zation during the 20th century up to the 1970s, in which its inhabitants lived in contrast to the rapid modernization of the country through the visions and moves of development, especially on the part of its enlightened lead-ership. This leadership makes selective use of the local and Western prevail-ing traditions attracting the research interest of economic and political an-thropology, which are my particular fields of study. There is considerable published material in English concerning the current Sultan’s visions but also the achievements of the present Omani state, which are worth docu-menting.12 The material shows that the monarch is inspired by many tradi-tions and brings about modernization and national homogenizing by testing the limits of Western myth, parliamentary democracy and secularization, thus generating scientific aporias (quandaries). How, for example, has bu-reaucracy been applied and managed to reverse the orientalistic assump-tion or the hostile attitude within tribal societies? How does religious sepa-ratism of different schools of Islam operate in a unifying instead of a divisive way in the creation of the modern state13 and how does the neo-liberal dogma on market economy and consumption co-exist with the state’s pol-icy of protectionism and other related ‘traditional’ technologies of govern-ance?14

As the study shows all these visions and challenges during the last 40 years have created new national and state habitus, living citizenship experi-ences and narratives of modernization in people and their bodies while act-ing and moving within this collective place (the country) and its particular spaces (city or country). Every single space is given a meaning and is inter-preted and lived in through people’s participation, through their bodily, spatial, discursive, symbolic and emotional experiences. In this way, my ob-servations in the field were of considerable importance, but also my pres-


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ence provoked incidents, challenging discussions and meaningful actions in interactive ways, worth being part of the analytical frame within a reflexive and critical approach (see below).

Ibadhism at the intersection of political and religious traditions

In this study, as mentioned above, each tradition has to be seen in a deconstructive way, which is to say within the socio-historical context of power relations and the hegemonic practices which produce and reproduce it, not passively but in an interactive way.15 That is to say that these tradi-tions may be established from above through others and are given meaning and shape through the actions and habitus of social actors who, at the same time, are inspired by them and transform them to fit a practical (rational) usefulness each time. The organized reports compiled by researchers locally or globally and which have as subject of study these traditions have to be placed in this deconstructive frame which concerns elite groups or ordinary people. In this case, the uses and abuses of the Ibadhi tradition become obvious in scientific studies, which, under the conditions of discipline and technology of power put down by Foucault, sometimes are adjusted to, sometimes undermine and other times are critical of the orientalistic per-spectives.

It would be interesting to look at some representative points to famil-iarize ourselves with the characteristics of Ibadhi tradition at a theological and political level in the way they were studied systematically by specialists of religion and history. On another level it is worth looking at the local and global political priorities these studies endorse and, by doing so, they re-produce dominant assumptions about knowledge and understanding. Fi-nally, how do particular power relations, both internally and externally, lead to systematic transformations and adjustments of a tradition which may have started as an ethical or religious frame but might end up as a political virtue of Modern governance? In our case, how did we go from the princi-pal of equality and meritocracy in running for the religious leadership posi-tion of imam to the hereditary character of political leadership (Sahid) un-der intercolonial antagonisms between 15 and 19th centuries16 to end up through British colonialism with the leadership of a charismatic Sultan? The


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present sultan of Oman (H.M. Qaboos bin Said) places great importance on consulting, while he is more and more widening the electoral base in an effort to establish as wide a ‘shuro/democratic’ consensus as possible. In order to make sense of facts which, according to western grammar, appear strange and paradoxical, we have to make use of different cognitive orders, discursive narratives and interpretative techniques. We will look at three characteristic attempts of describing the Ibadhi tradition; three kinds of narratives used successively in order to produce a deconstructive and po-litical meaning: an orientalistic, a historical and an anthropological one. Old and new orientalisms

We will focus on a study17 written from inside by someone who may be critical of the orientalist approach by westerners, but ends up objectifying and making a homogenized use of the Ibadhi tradition himself, since the researcher usually adopts the western genre of essentialism.

Ghubash’s study is of interest for another reason too: in its wide ac-ceptance and its use as a source of evidence by neo-orientalists, experts and think-tanks specializing in the Middle East as geographical and political category.18 This is shown by the manner in which this study came to my at-tention. Even though I had known of its existence at the Sharia Institute in Muscat, the study was not found in Oman. I requested it in its original ver-sion in French before it had become widely known and published in English. The book reviews of Ghubash’s work appear to be impressed by the kind of similarity between the democratic principles of the Imamate and western democracy. They extol the abilities of the author to work as a ‘western scholar’ and praise his ‘local’ origins. These reviews19 seem to reflect the spirit of Ghubash’s approach, who is doing a selective use of the historical facts and adding fieldwork remarks regarding moral values, Omani person-hood and the continuous use of the Ibadhi tradition. Let’s see a characteris-tic one by Jeremy Jones:20

“There are some good books by Western historians about Oman, for example, John Peterson's Oman in the 20th Century: Political Foundations of an Emerging State, (London: Croom Helm, 1978), but until now there has been nothing at all in English written from an Arab perspective, and indeed very little even in Arabic. Hussein Ghubash has started to put this deficit right. Oman – the Islamic Democratic Tradition is firmly rooted in Western


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scholarship, and at the same time he casts a refreshing light over his subject, reflecting that he is himself genuinely local to the Lower Gulf.

Ghubash has started to put this deficit right. Oman – the Islamic Democratic Tradition is firmly rooted in Western scholarship, and at the same time he casts a refreshing light over his subject, reflecting that he is himself genuinely local to the Lower Gulf. Ghubash begins with the early history of Ibadism, recognizing as central the principles of shūrā (consultation), the free election of the imam, and al-ijmā wa-l-taāqud (consensus and contract). From the time of the first imamate, Omani society was founded on these principles, and Ghubash moves on quickly to make the engagingly bold claim that the Ibadi imamate of Oman, roughly from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries, may be held to be ‘the longest democratic experience in the history of mankind’. Of course this raises a host of questions, not least what constitutes democracy itself, and though Ghubash accepts that in at least one way democracy can be seen as specifically set within the Western historical experience, he also shows that democracy is more that just an idea: it is a set of political, social, and cultural practices, which, in their wider interpretation, may arise in a variety of different cultural contexts, and take different forms in each, but still, having certain key features in common, be seen to share certain family resemblances. In this sense democracy has been and is visible in Oman in many ways. For example the impulse to consult is extraordinarily deeply ingrained. The Omani scholar Sheikh Aflah al-Rawahy has shown that the practice of shūrā exists in the private sphere of the home as well as in public life, and furthermore he argues the practice is pre-Islamic in its origins (unpublished conference paper, [Sept. 2000] ‘Islamic concept of al-shūrā and the Omani model’). While observing that the imam can do nothing without consultation, Ghubash notes that some Ibadis believe unanimity in any significant decision is a prerequisite, which is plainly in some sense much more democratic than crude Western winner-takes-all-politics. What Fredrik Barth characterizes as Omani male society’s powerfully internalized ‘ideology of politeness’ is at the core of the Omani social identity. Barth's account of the Omani public self suggests that it is customary to order one's behaviour in accordance with “a code of honor that inhibits the articulation of public opinion about a person's worth, expressed in judgments of criticism and praise, ridicule and scorn or

Σχόλιο [A1]: Al- ijmā‘ wa-l-ta’āqud


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deference. It likewise dampens the assertion of one’s own honor, the demonstration of individual excellence, the expression of claims of pride and even denies a person’s right to some form of pride in himself” (Sohar: Culture and Society in an Omani Town [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1983], p. 8). Ghubash is totally at home with these values and his book redolent with the Omani identity as experienced today. ‘My name is Mohammed, how are you?’ one Omani said to some strangers, before asking them his way, on a wintry evening in Oxford. The Omani had a good laugh as he told me about it—“they looked at me like I was crazy”. Of course, he was every bit urbane enough to know the reaction his courtesy would provoke, but all the same that courtesy required that he behave as he did, making a fool of himself if needs be, in this alien cultural context, for the sake of retaining integrity in his own.

More tangibly, there is a manifest egalitarianism in the way people dress, and Ghubash is attentive throughout to all the nuances of this sort of social and cultural practice. These nuances are beautifully conveyed in the subtle body language of the book's cover picture—the Sheikh is Majlis—from the author's private collection.

Ghubash covers the ground in every sense. His narrative of the early history, the Portuguese period, through to the Bū-Saīd dynasty, and the colonial challenge, is uniformly strong. At the same time, he has a deep insight into the ethical and theological basis of Ibadism, and the Omani identity.

But his book is by no means an easy read, for it covers a broad range of philosophical and theological territory, always with his own distinctive tone and perspective. This should make it all the more intriguing to a broad readership across the social sciences and historical studies. From one perspective it engages with Middle East Studies, from another with Islamic Studies, and indeed the holistic approach it adopts has great charm. Of its many strengths, one that is particularly engaging is the repositioning of the story of the West's engagement with Oman where it belongs—part of the story, but, at last, distinctly to one side. It is a valuable experience for Western experts to be quiet for a moment and hear the story told from another frame of reference”.

Even though the Ibadhi values and practices such as ‘consultation-shura’, ‘tolerance’, ‘equality’ and ‘accountability’ of the rulers can be traced

Σχόλιο [A2]: Sa‘īd

Σχόλιο [A3]: Αλλού shūrā


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in today’s methods of governing as well as in citizenship experiences, in the previous review of Ghubash’s study there is no comment on the orientalis-tic assumptions he himself undertakes temporally and methodologically. In effect, he is projecting his own genuine desire as to what he would eventu-ally wish to happen. Ghubash does not go into the trouble of pointing to the problem; the latter does not seem to be how Imam’s authority has been transformed into absolute power, under conflicting internal interests and external pressures of powers. He does not explain either how we end up with today’s Sultan being considered a charismatic persona, inspired by the Ibadhi tradition. Even though he attempts to record the historical facts, he is lacking in the tools of recording the transformations of a series of conflict-ing interests, the leadership through their agency, body technologies and the management of power and authority in the public space.21 This weak-ness of his does not allow him to recognize the significance of the ‘charis-matic sultanate’ because he idealizes the past by defining it in an orientalis-tic way, being a romantic follower of the renaissance of the Imamate. It is, however, admitted by many citizens of Oman as well as those who are fa-miliar with the Middle East and its regimes, including myself, that we have a state culture here which seems very different from the monarchies of the Gulf and this is due mainly to its charismatic present leadership.22 It is clear that the Sultan, in his position of absolute authority, silently and in a selec-tive manner, makes use of the Ibadhi tradition, following not the model of the Imams of the Imamate for governing, but the model of the first Sahid, the founder of the modern Omani state.23 The present Sultan has invested in the power of the Sahid and, using the principles of the Ibadhis for gov-ernance, applies policies and technologies of governance which abide by the rules of Western type democracy without declaring obedience and sub-jugation to it. All this, however, for the think-tanks of our days, is a list of details and because of the simplifications and generalizations they make, their approaches lack both scientific professionalism and criticism. For Danny Crichton, for example, Sultan Qaboos has a visionary project to build a strong national homogeneous state of justice by using the technologies of consensus and forgiveness to his rivals, and including rather than excluding the ‘different’, the less favorite people of his country.

“In the aftermath of the war [Dofar], the shura process and delibera-tive democracy greatly unified the country. Rather than suppressing the


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political power of the enemy fighters, Sultan Qaboos reintegrated the fight-ers quickly into his new government, and even some prominent rebels were offered government positions.” “Most importantly, he was involved in eve-ryday government decision-making, as he acted as both the head of state and head of government … Sultan Qaboos wanted a return to the consulta-tive process that had been the hallmark of Oman since its early days. Start-ing in 1975, he began a yearly tour of the country in which he directly ad-dressed the issues of people. On the institutional level, he created the first representative council in 1981 called the State Consultative Council … The Majlis al Shura formalized what was already a political reality –that a proc-ess of consensus had worked for Oman for centuries and did not need to stop in the modern era”… “Given the events in the region, and the poten-tially explosive diversity of religions in the country, increasing participation within the context of tradition was an excellent method for keeping the country moderated against extremism, as described earlier regarding the theory of deliberative democracy….”24

In any case Ghubash’s study seems to convince the public opinion, both outside and inside the country, that Ibhadhi tradition could work as the comparative advantage of the present Omani state:

“…it is now clear that Ibadhi leaders, from the grand mufti to local shaykhs, are fully enmeshed in the nation-building fabric of Omani society. Without eliminating the risk of a revival, it may be possible to contemplate the creation of an Imamate monarchy, headed by an Al Said. Such a system may allow the head of state to dispense political justice while retaining the title of religious leader. In Ibadhi custom, this OImani monarch would be backed by legitimate judicial fixtures, cementing harmony at the highest levels of the state. Not all Omanis would accept this alternative, but the possibility cannot be ruled out, given Qaboos’s record for innovation. Such an outcome would probably receive popular endorsements because it would introduce fundamental reforms within the Sultanat’s narrative. It would also fulfil Ghubash’s basic requirement for any Omani ruler: to gov-ern on the principles of consultation and free elections for leaders – to re-store the practices of established democracy.”25

Essentializing the Omani culture from outside, it operates, however, in

a unifying way, as self orientalism discursive practice, whereas for those


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inside, as an inspiration for elite groups and as an expectation for the rest of the citizens. This generates the stereotypes which both researchers and informants in the field are expected to take seriously and handle practically. It is, therefore, important to understand the transformations of power technologies on a theological, political and institutional level. In other words, it would be of critical importance to follow the metamorphoses of the elected Imam’s prestige into the Sultan’s hereditary authority, without the issue of legitimization arising on the part of the community. In doing so, and in order to deconstruct the orientalistic thesis by taking into account the stereotypes seriously, we need to combine two scientific approaches, the detailed descriptions of historical transformation, on the one hand, and the present ethnographic, thick and reflexive description, on the other.

Historical transformations

Modern myths and stereotypes can be understood by deconstructing theological and political traditions by equally looking for their account on people’s every-day practices. It is for this reason that we should pay serious attention to the historical deconstruction of Ibabhism, which is attempted by Islamic studies. Differing historical interpretations can equally supply the pragmatic evidence for deconstructing the past and transformation proc-esses of the religious learning.26 In addition, fieldwork data and different scientific attempts from the field (lanced by anthropologists or political sci-entists27 can contribute to the understanding of the impact historical trans-formations and intersected political, theological and cognitive traditions could acquire for people’s lives, politics, representations and expectations. It is very important to notice that Ibadhism28 constitutes part of the very trope of Islam as discursive tradition,29 in the meaning of disperse antago-nism over orthodoxy and orthopraxy, as main part of the theological ascrip-tion of religion and religiosity as social, political, emotional and spiritual ex-perience.

As the historian Valery Hoffman is noticing: “Ibadis retain a vital interest in the events of the first sectarian splits

and civil war in Islam; they are key to their own identity and claim to truth”. She also notice that “although Wilkinson makes passing mention of the key modern Omani scholars and their works, no analysis of those works has yet

Σχόλιο [A4]: Valerie


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appeared in any Western language. Furthermore, all Western scholarship has ignored the mystical dimensions of Ibadism and the collections of po-etry written by Omani scholars.”30

This is the gap which her study comes to fill along the same line Hus-sein Gubhash’s study we mentioned above. The information we obtain con-cerning the negative attitude of Ibadhi scholars towards Wahhabism dis-proves the orientalistic version of a distinction between Sufism and militant political movements, while at the same time points to an Ibadhi puritanism completely different to that of the Wahhabis.31 As Valery Hoffman remarks commenting on theological differences: “There are minor differences be-tween the prayer observances of Ibadis and Sunnis. Ibadis, like the Sh’ia and the Malikis, pray with their arms down at their sides…They believe that Fri-day prayer should be held only in major cities in which justice prevails – meaning that for centuries Ibadis did not observe congregational prayer because of the lack of a just Imam – and they reject the blessing of tyranni-cal rulers in the khutba.”32

Alongside this, Valery Hoffman supports the view that the Ibadhi tradi-tion took a different shape in the inner Oman to that taken in Zanzibar, where a convergence with the Sunni Islam and the School of Salafis took place. In addition, she advocates taking into serious consideration the ad-justment with the dominant religious authorities, mainly the Anglican church, and the English and French missionary schools33 offering education to the young Zanzibar Muslims attending their institutions. Valerie Hoffman reminds us in an especially convincing way that the Ibadhi tradition is not static but has been transformed through discursive policies and antagonis-tic power of the elites, dominant religious and political authorities spread-ing hegemony and inspiring ordinary people’s practices. An example could be the case of Abu Muslim’s cosmopolitanism and his difference from ear-lier Ibadhi scholars, in his effort to reconcile Muslims and Copts in Egypt:

“Abu Muslim is a fascinating blend of contradictions: ardent supporter of a pure Ibadi Imamate, friend and counselor of sultans, and admirer of British rule.”34

All these serial transformations of the Ibadhi tradition, which, at the level of theology and religious practices, are influenced as much by Sunni Islam as by western modern religious modalities and political governmen-tality, have to be taken seriously into consideration by researchers, while

Σχόλιο [A5]: Valerie


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they are trying to detect the uses and the meanings different religious, po-litical, ethical and spiritual traditions can selectively acquire in people's eve-ryday practices, representations and expectations.

Valerie Hoffman is challenging our deconstructive anthropological ap-proach when, in her conclusion, she mentions all the evidence I have in per-son noticed in the field:

“So far, Oman has managed to avoid unthinking Westernization and its corollary, Islamic reactionism. Islam remains an important part of life, but in a thoroughly natural and non-politicized way. Oman has all the conven-iences of modern life readily available to its citizens, and Muskat is as cos-mopolitan as any city in the world, but the people retain traditional dress and manners. The government supports the publication and dissemination of Ibadi scholarship, but the rhetoric of Ibadism is noticeably absent from its public pronouncements. Scholars like Nur-al-Din al-Salimi and Sa’id ibn Khalfan al Khalili are sources of national pride, but their struggles against the BuSa‘idi sultanate are downplayed. The present Mufti of Oman, Ahmad ibn Hamad ibn Sulayman al-Khalili, not coincidentally originally from Zanzi-bar, believes that the differences between Sunni and Ibadi Muslim are in-consequential trivialities that in no way impede Muslim unity. One can say that today, Ibadism is hardly sectarian, and the dream of establishing a modern Imamate has given way to aspirations more typical of modern life.”35

Ethnography and fieldwork reflexivity

As an anthropologist working on the state culture issue in Oman, I am more and more convinced of the fact that Ibadhism has been interiorized on people’s habitus as well as on its Sultan’s visions. In order to understand how this tradition can selectively be appropriated by the elites and com-mon people, we need to focus on the tropes of ‘intimacy’ acquiring gen-dered personhood and inter-relational integrity. Previous ethnographic re-search can prove very significant and useful to this purpose.

Fredrik Barth36 insinuates something similar to the above in his study of Sohar when he puts emphasis on the extreme expressions of men’s gen-tleness as the desire for personal integrity. The same remark is at the center of the study by Unni Wikan37 too. Her ethnographic data and reflective re-


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marks on the construction of personhood within the social context of tribal organization as well as city socializing are unsurpassed. The modalities of constructing personhood are priming practices and habitus of intimacy (in the meaning of the non intervention in other people’s lives) and positive conduct over the other, apparently compatible with personal dignity and honor the person needs so as to acquire his integrity and commitment to the broader belonging (family, tribe, village etc). However, these tropes in-dicate the need for strict regulations and positive respect expectations for other people’s choices, needs and priorities. These principles seem to be inspired, among other things, by the Imamate governmentality practices of the past, priming consultation consensus over rivalry.38 In this context of a positive inter-relational building of personhood, the Ibadhi principless of honored meritocracy and equality seem to acquire particular meaning by inspiring subjectivities to build a new community (i.e. the modern nation state culture). This is at least my impression, from the fieldwork.

However, all the reflective feelings of the researchers seem to be ig-nored by mainstream orientalistic discursive practices describing the Other and dominant policies of spreading democracy. Mark Valery’s study, for example,39 was published in English without the very significant chapter analyzing his experiences from the field and his interactions with the young Omanis today.40 In the middle of new discursive orientalistic practices over Islam, islamophobia and democracy today, I will attempt an assessment of the uses and abuses of the Ibadhi tradition in a glocal (global and local) per-spective.

Commenting on some of the above, it should be pointed out that the handling of the Ibadhi tradition internally and externally has directly been linked with power policies of knowledge, religion and otherness, since early Islamic governance and after that European colonization. Two questions have to be raised: on the one hand how this Islamic tradition became a dis-tinguishing feature of methods of political administration amongst conflict-ing local and foreign powers playing in the region, and, on the other, how during the 20th and 21st centuries this tradition has been used to challenge Western hegemonic values about democracy, tolerance and justice (see the policies of the Sultan concerning the rearrangement of local tribal power,41 the importance of consultation, tolerance and consensus, and the resis-tance movement of the opposition showing nostalgia for the imamate pe-

Σχόλιο [A6]: Valeri’s


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riod). The most interesting part is perhaps the unspoken or implied role the Ibadhi tradition is asked to play today, as a source of inspiration for an al-ternative model of development, progress and democracy but also as a sum of civil and civic virtues for the social subjects.42 In any case this Ibadhi tra-dition does not have an absolutely religious essence but is made up of po-litical principles and modalities, social organizing and moral values of the past and present times,43 integrating in every different historical circum-stance local and foreigner dominant priorities of competing interests and powers (see that of the Portuguese, English, Imams from the inner Oman or Sultans from the coastal area, etc). Finally, it is directly related to the place and history of the country, its geographical environment and activities of production, and its long distance trade in the Arab desert as well as western Africa and Zanzibar.44

In other words, beyond the use of Ibadhism as selective tradition in the recent history of the area, before and after British colonialism, it is of spe-cial interest to find out how and probably why this tradition inspires urges of ‘tolerance’, ‘equality’, ‘consultation’ and ‘consensus’ in the new citizen-ship, making people respectful of one another, towards their community and devoted to their leader. Interactively, although essentially, the consid-ered Ibadhi values and principles are becoming principal features of the new nation-state Omani culture.

It should be pointed out here that for the recognition of the impor-tance of the special features of this tradition it was necessary to pass through Western orientalistic assumptions and Islamic theology and his-tory. It would be an exaggeration and a methodological error to credit Sul-tan Qabous with one without the other45 as well as seeing the impact of the Ibadhi tradition on the outside (Western) world without considering its un-spoken effects within the country. Additionally, it would be a methodologi-cal omission not to refer to the current historical and political conjunction in the shadow of ‘Islamic terrorism’, islamophobia, the world wide eco-nomic crisis after 2008 but also the Arab Spring.46 The hegemony of West-ern values has been challenged on many levels and alternative solutions are urgently sought, which will not be of a fundamentalist nature, and which will not reproduce internal hegemonies and dictators, but will advance local priorities of the civic virtue instead.

Σχόλιο [A7]: Αλλού Qaboοs


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Going over my field notes again and again, revisiting the Sultan’s vi-sions and technologies of their materialization, recalling images and words of my informants in the field and conversing with previous anthropological studies of the area and its people, I can assume that the Ibadhi tradition takes on special significance in today’s Oman, not because some people have to test the limits of an alternative to democracy, tolerance, consensus, etc within the spirit of competition with the hierarchical priorities of West-ern modernity, but because, in practice, social subjects construct their per-sonalities inspired by Ibadhi principles, experiencing them through the habi-tus of inertia or their selective and strategic use. All these may lead to gen-eralizations and stereotypes of the kind ‘the Omanis are exceedingly polite but unapproachable’, ‘happy but lazy’, ‘proud of their tribal traditions of consensus and hospitality’, ‘conservative, but are not like the Saudis or other people from the Gulf countries’. All these stereotypes need to be de-constructed both through the long stretch of history and its transformations and world-creating circumstances after the reconstitution of today’s state culture during the early 1970’s. The latter is combining neoliberal capitalism with state paternalism and democratic aspirations with Ibadhi inspirations regarding ‘consultation’, ‘consensus’, ‘justice’, ‘ruling’ and ‘citizenship’. Pre-vious anthropological studies as well as my own research in the field have shown that the way personhood is constructed and involved with the com-munity, the meaning of belonging and freedom deserve further research if we are to understand from below the use and abuse of every tradition by the subjects themselves. When, for example, Unni Wikan47 talks about ‘the primacy of the privacy’ built upon positive conduct over the other, she gives us a particular frame for building community and solidarity beyond Western European individuality or Mediterranean negative antagonistic competive-ness. These are characteristics which are related neither to the Western European modernity of ‘guilt’ on a private level, nor to the Mediterranean type of ‘shame’, which presupposes an apology by the subject in the eyes of the community, searching ways of punishing him/her. The perception of ‘freedom’ also creates the same impression with conditions of respect to-wards the other’s wishes; at the same time it might serve new neoliberal expectations of excess material consumption. The incident at Ras Al Had, where I exchanged views with my female informants around the meaning of ‘freedom’, seems to be characteristic. Having been asked by them if in


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my country there are romantic relationships before marriage and having given them a positive response, my female informant’s next question was “how then do you know whose children are the ones you give birth to later?” My answer was that pre-marital relationships do not automatically go with lack of devotion to the current partner. The response that followed troubled me for some time: “And what kind of ‘freedom’ is this that you claim you have if in the end you cannot go with whomever you wish when you want to?”

This way or that, the arduous annual journey by the Sultan to his citi-zens may seem ‘exotic custom’, as the roles are reversed during it with the leader giving the opportunity to the hosts to have the upper hand in a show of equality.48 It is, however, with such acts of traditional rituals of govern-ance that the Sultan gives self-respect to his fellow citizens and secures, through intimacy, their consent in order that he may lead them to his vi-sions of development of the modern Omani state. It is accepted that, with all these rituals, which are a result of combining local and imported tradi-tions, the Sultan never ceases to be theirs and, because of this, he consti-tutes for all an admittedly charismatic persona.

To conclude, I would say that democratic values can be applied in both the West and the East, with every person making strategic use of the par-ticular local tradition, challenging hypocritical attitude and corruption, col-lectiveness and individualism processes, etc. Is it perhaps that meritocracy and healthy antagonism are more likely to be established in societies where ‘local tradition’ (Ibadhi, tribal, anti-Western, imperial, but also anti-Saudi and anti Emirates) defines and works on that “trust in social values and re-spect for the Other’s personhood must be always a matter for evidence”? Moreover, what are the forces leading a society to persist in gender ine-qualities, thus defying government policies and their leader’s visions aiming to the abolition of gender inequality, in the public sphere? What are the limits of state centric country applying a free market economy in a society where social trust must be established first by kinship and other collective networks? What could the oriental-like ‘despotism’ of enlightened monar-chy gain from the democratic Western experience and vice versa? These are issues which anthropology can examine in the frame conceptual device of ‘state culture’. We can thus open the agenda of intercultural and inter-disciplinary dialogue, between theology, history, anthropology and political


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sciences, which must be conducted in our seeking for new governmentality practices, involving the elites and people, the state and its citizens; both are adjusting their experiences and practices to the Western hegemony of val-ues (see democracy); equally, both can challenge global hegemonies through a selective reading and use of the political and religious local tradi-tions in historical perspective. Notes 1 The concept of ‘tradition’ in its dynamic and interactive form in the way it is

deconstructed and formulated by Asad in his writings as the central issue (1986; 2003). See also analytically Anjum 2007.

2 See relevant publications in Greek, Tsibiridou F.: “Muslim Women of the East”. Representations, Cultural Meanings and Politics. Athens: Kritiki 2006.

3 Tsibiridou, F. & Stamatopoulos, D.: Orientalism at its limits. From the Ottoman Balkans to the Contemporary Middle East. Athens: Kritiki 2008.

4 Sharma; Gupta 2006. 5 -Lughod 1989; 1991. 6 Taking part in the various visits were a historian of Islam, a specialist in Sharia

Low from Egypt, a Greek Syrian, an Arab speaking native, four Prehistoric Ar-chaeologists and an artist, specialized in landscape architecture.

7 By focusing on ‘state culture’ we don’t adopt a totalizing narrative, away from a conception seeing the modern state as a formation from above, imposed to the local ‘traditional’ structures from above; on the contrary, we will try to under-stand this state culture as being in the intersection of the local with the global and multilayed historical encounters. In our approach equally the concept of ‘culture’ and ‘tradition’ are presented in their dynamic meaning and selective use by people and researchers.

8 The space, in the way it is generated, conceptualized and lived in and at the same time is affected by local and non-local dimensions, constitutes an analyti-cal category, which is determinant for a critical understanding. This understand-ing, beyond the historical and political transformations of the space into ‘place’ (Abu-Lughod 1989; 1991), includes the factual and lived experiences of human gendered bodies (Low 2003).

9 See relevant publications by the Omani ministries, and the specific journal on ‘tolerance’: Tasamoh 2004.

10 Ministry of Information 2001. 11 A detailed description of their discourses and habitus could provide support for

this. Unfortunately due to economy of space we cannot go into this here. 12 There is a body of this kind of documentation, collected by the ministries, the

Institute of Sharia Studies and the Center of the Omani studies. Some of this documentation has been found in bookshops, with the significant label of ‘fam-


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ily bookshop’. For the present analysis this rich documentation has been used sporadically.

13 See analytically the Sultan’s alliance choices with the businessmen and traders who are from the Shia minority and the Baluchis, claiming for this ‘rational’ choice the Ibadhi principal of religious tolerance; see also the Sultan’s visions and policies of sectioning the state into regional peripheries which are called to enter into a competition towards development. This model of planning mod-ernization comes to replace the social organizing on the basis of tribes and terri-tories. Both policies, as well as the regeneration of the Omani state and bu-reaucracy by using people from diaspora and less powerful tribes, plus protec-tionist policies of Omanisation in the employment sector lead to the rebirth of the social contract within the new Omani state and its citizens. See characteris-tically Marc Valery’s (2007) study on the subject.

14 For the marriage of neo-liberalism with protectionism, within authoritarian gov-ernmental practices, we have plenty of documentation: from the Royal decrees to the organizing of the old and new markets and enterprises. We could follow an analysis by focusing on consumerism policies and people’s practices.

15 Asad 1986; 2003; Anjum 2007. 16 Wilkinson 1987. 17 Ghubash 1998. 18 The study is widely known among the theological studies of Ibadhism, which are

published in Arabic and to which many Imamate adherents refer to. This has been established from both, an on the fieldwork research and a bibliographic one.

19 Another review with similar perspective within the spirit of new orientalistic approaches, such as coming of the milieu of Security Studies is that of J. A. Ke-chichian, (Kechichian 2007).

20 Jones 2007. 21 Some of these are included in the research of anthropologists (Eickelman 1984;

1985; Chatty 2009). However, reference to the management of space and the rituals that take place in the public sphere should include, apart from the Sul-tan’s actions, also the average citizen’s agancy, a subject which we hope to study as part of our research. Beyond ethnographic observation we may also in-clude data from previous analysis regarding institutional discourse and prac-tices, by reading among the lines of the mainly positivistic approaches (Wincler 2000; Siegfried 2000; Rabi 2002; Mohsin Jum’a 1981; Barber 2007; Brierty & Al Zubair 2004; Lamki 1998; Azri 2010). This kind of economic and political ‘mod-elled’ descriptions of the Omani society can keep the ethnographic method within the priorities of the institutional discourses and the ways people are ex-pected to respond to the governmental policies.

22 There is not a single citizen of Oman who does not confess to being extremely worried about the next day following the Sultan’s likely death. The Sultan’s charismatic personality, as ‘despot with class’ (Whitaker 2011,) is equally


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pointed out by non-Omanis who live and work in Oman (personal communica-tions). The same applies to the political analysts focusing on the Sultans visions from 1970 to date (Kechichian 2008; Crichton 2007; Plekhanov 2004). It is also evidenced by the actions and initiatives the Sultan takes in crisis situations in order to ensure a better standard of living for his citizens. This does not mean that the well-being of everyone is secured, especially those belonging to the category pariah-foreigners (manual labor-foreign immigrants (Wincler 2000).

23 See a detailed recent analysis of the regime by Plekhanov (2004) as well as the previous historical approaches (i.e. Wilkinson 1987; Ward 1987; Peterson 1978; 2009).

24 Crichton 2007. 25 Kéchichian 2006: 176. 26 Hoffman 2004; Salimi 2007; 2011. 27 Barth 1983; Eickelman 1985; Valery 2007; Wikan 1982. 28 See indicatively: Ennami 1971. 29 Anjum 2007. 30 Hoffman 2004: 201, 202. 31 Hoffman 2004: 203-4. 32 Hoffman 2004: 205. 33 Hoffman 2004: 211. 34 Hoffman 2004: 212. 35 Hoffman 2004: 213. 36 Barth 1983. 37 Wikan 1982. 38 Equally we can detect similar practices of the Arab customary law and the

sharia path, priming consensus over conflict (Messick 1993). 39 Valeri 2007. 40 For the sake of brevity we cannot here refer in detail to the contribution of all

fieldwork studies taken place in Oman since 1970. 41 One typical strategy moves around the ecological campaign, the protection of

the nature and the human resources of the desert: Mohsin Jum’a 1981. 42 For this purpose the only analysis of the Basic Law seems not to consist of the

necessary condition of data analysis (Siegfried 2000). 43 Ghubash 1998. 44 Peterson 1978; 2009. 45 Plekhanov 2004. 46 Whitaker 2011. 47 Wikan 1982. 48 Eickelman 1984; 1985; Chatty 2009.


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